


Future, who won't wait for you?

by Irrelevancy



Category: One Piece
Genre: Execution, Gen, Moral Dilemmas, One Piece: Stampede, Revolutionary Army - Freeform, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 17:01:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20474477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Irrelevancy/pseuds/Irrelevancy
Summary: Post-Stampede, Sabo pays Garp a visit.





	Future, who won't wait for you?

**Author's Note:**

> I saw _Stampede_ twice in theaters, and amidst all the excitement and delight, I had a moment of, _wow, Bullet isn't at all unlike Ace._

This wasn't the first time he's visited Gramps since Ace's death. Sabo wasn't trying to make a habit of it, but after the whole Douglas Bullet debacle, this had to be done.

“Betrayed and hunted down by people who feared his strength and potential, taken under Roger's wing, desperate to prove himself,” he said from the window, where the cover of night kept Gramps from seeing his expression. It wasn't a kind one. “I don't know if Ace would've loved or hated him.”

Gramp's hand, wrapped around a pen hovering over documents, stopped in its track. He didn't look up either though. He knew this would only be a short visit.

“Ace didn't massacre every inhabitant of his home island,” Gramps pointed out.

“Yeah, but you killed him anyways,” was Sabo's soft reply.

“You,” Gramps started, finally setting down the pen, “want the Marines to pardon Douglas Bullet's execution? After his conspiracy to murder on genocidal proportions?”

“Yes.”

“And when he escapes this second life sentence? Will you be the one to hunt him down? And how many people will he kill again before you get him squared away?” Gramp's tone had gone waspish, but at Sabo's unmoving silhouette, he deflated with a frustrated sigh. “But of course, you knew all this already.”

“Of course,” Sabo echoed. He held his top hat in one hand, and ducked his face into it, hiding from the lights of the Marine base. They looked exactly like the lights of the RA base. “Gramps, I believe in independent wills to live as much as Ace did. I _know_, okay? I know the moment Ace set out as a pirate he accepted death as a very real possibility. I know that Bullet made bad choices after bad choices, hurting others because he's been hurt. But I'm also a Revolutionary, right? Wills to live are cultivated and honed and _warped_ by what you were given, I couldn't possibly work with the RA if I don't believe that. I'm not asking you to let Douglas Bullet live, I'm asking you to let the next Ace live.”

Buena Festa, infamous underworld blood broker and war profiteer, the orchestrator of the entire Douglas Bullet fiasco, had been Sabo's target on the island. The mission hadn't been filed into wet works; Sabo's job had been retrieval. Buena Festa was destined for an interrogation room, where the RA would wring him dry of any contacts, tactics, information that it could benefit from. Blood and war, ends justified means. Those _means_ would be carefully doled out of course, with nothing but the people's ultimate peace in mind. But blood and war and military bunkers all looked too damn similar in moonlight.

Sabo didn't know, sometimes, if Ace would love him or hate him. But he could do this one small thing.

“I know you don't change your mind once it's made up Gramps, but somehow I get the feeling you haven't quite decided where you stand yet.” The specter of Ace clung to every empty, precise, military corner of the room. Garp's office, Garp's home. This was what he chose instead of family. Sabo was here to remind him of that. “Execute Douglas Bullet, and you teach other Douglas Bullets to keep fighting power with power. Boys who grow up like Ace will keep charging down the path of becoming independent strongmen.”

“What do you suggest boy?” Gramps snorted, “that we recuperate Bullet with the power of love?”

_Who else do you have left to love?_ Sabo wanted so bad to ask. But the specter of Ace hung over him too, and advised him to hold his tongue. So Sabo shrugged instead.

“Everyone just wants a purpose in life. Bullet thought the only purpose available to him was violence. Ace was the same way. There's a reason for that.”

Douglas Bullet would be executed three days later, because the Marines were the Marines, and one sort-of-plea between a young Revolutionary and his unforgiven foster grandfather wasn't going to change that. Monkey D. Garp though, was on record for opposing the execution, something Sabo, and Dadan, and Makino all wish he had done just two years earlier.


End file.
